stardust on your lips
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: After the Department of Mysteries, after Sirius dies, Harry finds a Time Turner in his pocket.


Written for the Trainee Unspeakable/Time Room Job on the Ministry of Magic Forum: Have a character in your story wishing to Time Travel, and another character having to explain them why Time Travel is dangerous, and trying to persuade them from not doing it.

Word count: 999

 **stardust on your lips**

With all the chaos that the debacle at the Ministry led to _(oh Merlin, his friends are hurt and it's all his fault he could have, should have stopped them)_ , Harry doesn't think he can really be blamed for not noticing about the Time Turner in his pocket until his fingers brush against the cool, smooth glass.

It tingles in his palm and the possibilities are enough to make his heart beat faster – with this, he could fix… _everything_ , could erase his mistakes from Time itself and make this anew.

Sirius… Sirius could _live_ , his friends could be safe – all through a few turns of the golden jewel sitting on his palm.

 _(but of course, nothing could ever be that easy, could it?)_

The Time Turner swings from Harry's fingertips, the golden chain it hangs from so think it seems like it could snap at any moment. It's almost like it's whispering to him, telling him all the things they could do together (one turn, two turns, three turns and you'd be back before everything), and almost against his will, something whispers back.

 _(his conscience has Hermione's voice – he almost laughs at that)_

It reminds him of what happened the last time he used a Time Turner – what happened, what could have happened, what they almost lost.

'A closed loop,' Hermione had called it, once they were back in the Hospital Wing, her tone fascinated even as something inside Harry's chest died, knowing that no matter what he chose to do, it was always going to be something predictable, something he would _always_ have chosen to do.

To realize, at thirteen, that he couldn't be changed hadn't been as reassuring as it should have been.

A closed loop, and that means that he had travelled in time only because he had always travelled in time. There had been signs then, a Patronus no one could have made, a werewolf running off into the Forest, even _Peter_ being revealed.

There are no such signs now, nothing that points out to the possibility of Harry going back and saving at least something _(Sirius)_ , nothing but the pounding of his heart in his chest as his mind begs him to go.

His conscience has Hermione's voice as it tells him 'no, you can't, this won't work', but in the end it's not Hermione who convinces him to let this rest.

 _(Hermione, who nobody has let him see since they came back from the Ministry)_

It's Luna, barefoot and humming a song Harry thinks he recognizes, who finds him there, who takes one look at him and what dangles from his fingers, and who puts her hand beneath it, slowly lifting it up until she traps time in between their palms.

"My mother," she starts, her voice soft and her eyes impossibly wide, "worked on Time when she died. Did you know that?"

He didn't. Wordlessly, he shakes his head.

"I'm sorry," he replies, chocked up. He's not even sure what he's apologizing for this time – for dragging her into this, when she would have been safer away from him, for the fact that her mother (like his own parents) is long dead or for the fact that he probably just brought back memories of it.

"Thank you," she nods, oddly solemn. For a moment, her fingers tighten their grip on his almost painfully until she lets go a breath later. "But that's how I know that there is nothing more dangerous than Time."

He can hear the capital letter in her speech, and he thinks that this is the closest he's ever heard her come to hatred.

"Hermione told me the stories," Harry admits, shifting on his feet. "About the people who went mad, or never came back from when they had gone to."

He had believed them, then, but now… How could anything, even madness, be worse than the emptiness eating at his chest now that the rage has left?

Luna smiles, but it doesn't look right. Something about it makes Harry shivers, makes his hair stand on ends.

Almost everyone, he remembers, calls Luna Lovegood mad.

"My mother wanted to change history – she wanted to prove it could be done… She wanted," and there her eyes take on a wistful tinge, "to prove that having the Unspeakables restrict Time Turners to just their use was just one more weapon they kept for the Ministry, that making a Time Turner outside their Department was possible."

"The Ministry doesn't have an army," Harry retorts almost automatically, too used to Luna's claims of creature armies hidden by Fudge and his office.

Luna shrugs, her light eyes seemingly staring right through Harry and into his soul. It makes him feel naked, the thought of what she could see there, and he shivers.

"That doesn't mean they don't keep weapons," she simply replies, making more sense in that single sentence than everything he's heard of her since they've met. "And Time… Time could be the best of them all."

It chills him, to think that someone could use a Time Turner as a weapon. He imagines it only too clearly, Voldemort going back again and again until he's killed everyone who would oppose him before they can even start, and he thinks he can understand what she's trying to tell him.

"You don't want me to go back," he whispers, the knowledge falling from his lips as it blooms inside his mind.

It tastes bitter in his mouth, especially as he knows that she's right.

"I wish you could," she replies, soft and kind. "But you're my friend, and I want you safe. If you went against Time, you wouldn't be safe."

It sounds so simple, coming from her – and maybe it is. Maybe it is.

Harry closes his eyes, one beat, two and then three, and when he opens them again, Luna is gone.

His palm is warm but the glass is still cool.

It no longer whispers to him.


End file.
